Unknowable Threats in “The Secret Life of Bots”

By Lanndis De Lallo
May 22, 2019

Suzanne Palmer’s “The Secret Life of Bots” depicts a furiously determined robot named
Bot 9. When Ship, its acting authority, awakens it with a task, Bot 9 announces, “I serve”
(Palmer 1). However, as the bot’s unique improvisational characteristics become more apparent,
its subsequent threat to Ship and the human captain whose authority is absolute, begin to surface.
Palmer hints throughout the text before declaring outright that an improvisational robot poses
security and operational threats to their mission. Despite Bot 9’s helpful improvisation that
ultimately leads to the survival of the entire human race, the concern over its autonomy is a
prominent concern for the story’s acting authorities. Bot 9 poses a threat not because its
intentions are not pure, or because its tactics were unsuccessful, but because by disrupting its
hierarchy of authority, it inevitably calls into question human intelligence, problem solving, and
leadership. In a future where alien entities threaten humanity, humans must perceive themselves
as the superior authoritative being; they cannot risk disillusionment or they will have to confront
the reality that they may be as powerless to contend with their unknown enemy as the beings of
their own design.

The importance of authority and the chain of command is depicted in the opening moments
of “The Secret Life of Bots”. Although Bot 9 was disappointed it had not been activated for a
more imminent task, it assured itself that “Ship knew best” (Palmer 1). Evidently, Bot 9
welcomes the structure that places itself as a subordinate to Ship, and ultimately to Captain
Baraye whose rank supersedes every entity aboard, both artificial and organic. Bot 9’s
willingness to “serve” is built into its programming and therefore when it engages in its mission
to eliminate the Incidental on board the ship, its initial motivations are strictly in line with its
orders. From Bot 9’s awakening, Palmer implies that the robot’s thoughts and feelings are not as
strict as they appear, namely in the fact that Bot 9 ​has​ thoughts and feelings. From filing
“information away for later consideration” (Palmer 2), to noticing the Ship’s decay that “merited
strong disapproval” (Palmer 2), Palmer makes it clear that the apparently dependent robot has its
own autonomous impressions, opinions, and agency. These episodes could be disregarded as
coded intelligence designed for optimal performance, but Palmer’s continued use of the word
“felt” in regards to the robots’ responses indicate the author’s intent to depict these robots more
sentiently than their world demands, or would like. Juxtaposed with Bot 9’s announcement “I
serve”, it “felt a slight tug on its self-evaluation monitors” (Palmer 1), then it “felt a slight
unease” (Palmer 4), it “felt satisfied” and “felt immediately more stable” (Palmer 10), and most
convincing, Bot 9 even “felt the compulsion” (Palmer 9) to inquire beyond the parameters of its
duty. Palmer’s language foreshadows Bot 9’s eventual abandonment of the chain of command in
favour of its own original “idea” (Palmer 14) that undermines the hierarchy integral to the
vessel’s human operators. Despite Bot 9’s success, Ship is still irate by its insubordination,
claiming “you old multibots were always troublemakers” (Palmer 16). Ship’s concerns mirror
the alarmed crew who cannot fathom the apparent “mutin[y]” (Palmer 18) Bot 9 had achieved.
Bot 9’s improvisation, though the reason Earth remains safe from alien invasion, is detrimental
to the system where humans have self-elected their own superiority. Despite their flaws, humans
demand ultimate authority over their world because in a time when they are being threatened by
the unknown, it is pertinent they act as a unified force against said threats, meaning a single
human being must be the executive decision maker. Bot 9’s improvisation is problematic
because insubordination causes confusion, and worse, implies that leadership is in question. If a
simple old multibot can solve a universal crisis, the legitimacy of humans’ leadership and
computational abilities are no longer paramount. When humans’ physical world is in danger, the
only more menacing threat to their existence is the legitimacy of their minds. As much as Bot 9’s
improvisation saved their physical world, it established another grave circumstance: that a robot
can conceive a solution no human could.

As well as disrupting the crew’s chain of command, Bot 9’s improvisation represents
another peril for its human masters: the threat of the unknown. The purpose of the crew’s
mission is to destroy an unknown alien entity before it can wreak unknown dangers upon their
home world, indicating their attitude toward unknowable dangers is to preemptively avoid them.
According to Bot 4340, a younger robot, the “Improvisational routines'' present in old multibots
were discontinued for apparently causing “dangerous operation instability” (Palmer 13). Because
Bot 9 has been inactive for so long, it has not yet unloaded its archaic programming, and despite
4340’s protest, employs it to conceive an illicit solution to their alien threat. Evidently, the
rebelliousness present in Bot 9 had also been quelled with updates in favour of compliance. Bot
4340 demonstrates as much when it advises Bot 9 it “should unload [its Improvisational routines]
from [its] running core immediately” (Palmer 13). Humans’ fears about robots becoming too
autonomous reverberate through the code they have instilled in their creations; Palmer articulates
that the mere act of running improvisational programming causes protest and uncertainty from a
younger model. Palmer chooses to omit Bot 9’s recruiting of the other robots, and the reader is
left as mystified as the Ship and its human crew as to how it achieved such a mutiny among
robots programmed to serve. Palmer illustrates the captain’s outrage directly when she exclaims
“we don’t have time for this nonsense… Ship, find your damned bots and get them cooperating
again” (Palmer 14). Captain Baraye’s disregard for the robots’ emotions and independent
motivations indicate she does not understand the depth of their sentience, and this lack of
knowledge leads to frustration. To execute a successful mission, the humans must believe that all
non-human “lives” - who, unlike the human crew, have not consented to their probable demise -
exist only to serve, and do not know or do not care about being destroyed. Lopez declares,
“they’re… [t]iny specks of machines, and that’s it” (Palmer 14). Although his comment appears
naive, his apathy for the robots suggests that in regards to life forms with whom he can not
relate, nor understand, he (and the other humans aboard the ship) would rather consider their
sentience insignificant than compound his own fears of death by alien, with fears that he knows
as little about the intricacies of humans’ own creations as he does of unfathomable aliens.
Furthermore, Bot 9’s improvisation represents the multibot’s ability to change an undesirable
outcome in favour of one it deems more favourable. Not only does its improvisation incur
disruptions to their chain of command, but Palmer establishes that the robot is more dangerous to
humans because if it can act on its own free will, then humans must acknowledge that robots
have sentience beyond servitude. The dangers a free and intelligent life form may create for
humans have already been realized in their confrontation with Cannonball, and the notion that
another unknown threat may be lurking in code the humans themselves have already created, is a
terror they are not willing to concede.

Suzanne Palmer’s “The Secret Life of Bots” presents many dangers to the human way of
life. Obviously the alien vessel Cannonball presents the most imminently perilous one; however,
through her descriptive language and dialogue, Palmer focuses on a different and more
pernicious one; robot autonomy and “improvisation”. Bot 9 triggers an uprising among the
billions of bots working on the vessel, and although its intentions were good and the result was
successful, its superiors - Ship and especially Captain Baraye - feel violated because their
servants have defied their chain of command. In any mission, singular authority is integral to its
success and thus the captain is rightfully irate. However, by depicting Bot 9 as a robot with
agency, emotions, and improvisational skills, the author suggests that the captain’s real concern
is in the autonomy of the robot, and how its capabilities may bring the legitimacy of human
leadership and problem solving into question. Despite Bot 9’s success, she demands the
rebellious robot be discarded because although it saved humanity from a terrifying encounter
with aliens, it represents an even greater threat to the hierarchy that establishes humans as
superior - for now.
 Work Cited
Palmer, Suzanne. “The Secret Life of Bots.” ​Clarkesworld Magazine​, Nov. 2017,
clarkesworldmagazine.com/palmer_09_17/.